She therefore could not withstand his argument. But with the
self-combating proclivity of the supersensitive, an answer thereto
arose in Clare's own mind, and he almost feared it. It was based
on her exceptional physical nature; and she might have used it
promisingly. She might have added besides: "On an Australian upland
or Texan plain, who is to know or care about my misfortunes, or to
reproach me or you?" Yet, like the majority of women, she accepted
the momentary presentment as if it were the inevitable. And she
may have been right. The intuitive heart of woman knoweth not only
its own bitterness, but its husband's, and even if these assumed
reproaches were not likely to be addressed to him or to his by
strangers, they might have reached his ears from his own fastidious
brain.
It was the third day of the estrangement. Some might risk the odd
paradox that with more animalism he would have been the nobler man.
We do not say it. Yet Clare's love was doubtless ethereal to a
fault, imaginative to impracticability. With these natures, corporal
presence is something less appealing than corporal absence; the
latter creating an ideal presence that conveniently drops the defects
of the real.
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